Need input on upgrades

Hey all I'm looking for some help from the techies here.

I am wanting to upgrade my Case, Video Card, and maybe go to an SSD. I would like to keep it around 500 but am open to suggestions. If anyone can help with the questions below that would be helpful.

1. Right now I have an Nvidia 250 and was wanting to go up to 540,550 or 560. Any suggestions as to brand? I have usually stuck with EVGA but I really don't care that much. I will probably want to wait until it is on sale.

2. Any suggestions on a Mid range case that has filters for the fans or they can be added? I have a lot of dogs and the case sits on the floor so it collects dust.

3. When using an SSD what is stored on the SSD and what is stored off of it? I have never installed one so I'm not too familiar with organization of files on them.

Thanks for your help!

Nzxt makes some nice mid range cases. Go with a 560ti 2gig for a nice upgrade. As for sdd I have not look at them much recently so I won't put my two cents in on that.

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Rock8104 wrote: 3. When using an SSD what is stored on the SSD and what is stored off of it? I have never installed one so I'm not too familiar with organization of files on them.

As far as I know, an SSD is pretty much a harddrive just faster. What you put on it is whatever you want to put on it. Can use it as a boot drive to get faster start ups with windows and games, I think that's it's big push atm.
I don't have one myself, out of my pricerange.

Im wanting to do the upgrade this month but i can wait too. I have a full atx mobo. Thanks for helping guys

Wes, when do you expect prices to drop? I want to add another nvidia 570gtx sooner or later....

Thanks for the info Wes. I think I like the HAF case a little better so I'm going to wait for it to go on sale and pick it up along with the 560ti at that point.

garfi3ld wrote: This is what I would go with
You would use the SSD to install your OS and important apps. If you have many steam games its best to keep steam on your second hard drive, just from a capacity standpoint.

Side question - Is there a way to install steam on both hard drives? I have too many games that i'd like installed to have them all on my SSD with my OS, but i'd like some of the FPS games on my SSD, but could care less about Orcs must die and Dungeon Defenders as i don't play them that often... I tried to find a way to install the games to a different drive, but wasn't able to figure it out. So i'm assuming it's all or nothing when it comes to STEAM installs?
Thanks

I spread out the love.

os and origin on one ssd
steam on a 2nd ssd
Blizzard games on a third

os fails reinstall back up in running in 20 minutes

blizzard games on a 3rd drive. Good idea, keep them as far away from the OS as possible...lol

Dave,

Your looking for a program called junction link magic. It will let you mirror a entire path to a different drive put the data on that drive empty path on the old drive but the OS will think its all on 1 drive.

www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/...ion-Link-Magic.shtml

renegade wrote: Dave,

Your looking for a program called junction link magic. It will let you mirror a entire path to a different drive put the data on that drive empty path on the old drive but the OS will think its all on 1 drive.

www.softpedia.com/get/PORTABLE-SOFTWARE/...ion-Link-Magic.shtml

Let it be known that i don't have the best understanding of what i'm talking abotu most of the time when it comes to the extremely technical, but wouldn't this defeat the purpose of having items on the SSD? I mean i understand that the SSD has faster load times, but if i tell my Computer that it's on my SSD, then have a program map it to my old non-ssd HD, then isn't that creating more steps and slowing down the whole process? maybe i'm just not fully inderstanding...
Bottom line is, i only have a GTX260 pushing out the images, so i don't think i'm going to see much change in performance if i move Steam off my SSD (where my OS is) and put it on my old "normal" HD. Am i wrong? I'm always interested to see how i went wrong in my thinking as i believe there is more than meets the eye when it comes to how Computers store information...

PS - Sorry Rock for hijacking your topic... Maybe Wes could move all the posts aboud SSD/file managment into it's own topic to keep yours purely yours.

What you do is you put the games that you dont play alot etc on the 2nd HDD and use junction link to make it so steam still see's this dir's, while keeping the games you play alot on the SSD for the speed. I mean I have 60 some games in my steam and a good 30 installed at a given time. There is no way I could keep all those on the SSD so I have steam installed to the SSD then the games I only play at a lan or rare I junction link to my 750. Leaving the ones I play alot on the SSD. So this way I get the best of both angles I have all of them installed but the ones I want to load faster are on the ssd.

My steam dir is over 300 meg. Even if I wanted it would not all fit on my 256 SSD and I can't see the cost to put in something larger at this time so junction link magic lets you work around the limitation of SSD sizes.

EDIT - After re-reading I think you thought this made you move the whole dir and that is not the case. Steam is installed to the SSD in path X say games/steam. Then on the HDD you put a dir named games/steam. Then you look in the steam dir for the games dir you want to move an create that exact path on the HDD eg games/steam/steamapps/common/batman2. Then you move the data from the same path on the ssd to the same path on the hdd leaving the empty batman2 dir on the ssd. Then you go into junction link and set the source to the empty path on the ssd and the destination to the same path on the hdd and it will put in a link to the 2 paths so they act as one. Open it on the ssd and you will see the data on the hdd, open it on the hdd and you will see the data as well, but it only resides on the hdd.

I hope that helps.

SO I went with the EVGA 560ti and a Corsair scout case. I like the handle on the scout case and it saved me a little. The wife wants a new lappy now... Time to shop for that.

Thanks for all your help I will post pictures when done.

If you reinstall the OS you would only lose the steam dir if you formated the HD, or didnt copy it off before reformating. Just install OS, install steam, delete the new steam dir, copy the old back, then run junction links to put the links back in place. Done it several times already myself.

garfi3ld wrote: Most aren't waiting on your hard drive to load things, other than games where map load times are an issue.

Looking at you, Battlefield 3. :<

garfi3ld wrote: I actually run bf3 off my ssd, not because I want to but because I always forget to change the location in origin before installing. I always install origin itself on the second hard drive and forget that it still defaults to C drive for game installs

Probably better that way, the map load times are pretty atrocious.